Recent conventional vehicle lamp assemblies can include those employing a semiconductor light emitting apparatus including an LED element and a wavelength conversion layer having a uniform thickness formed on the surface of the LED element (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2005-322923 and 2008-507850). FIGS. 1 and 2 show examples of this type of semiconductor light emitting apparatus including an LED element Cp and a wavelength conversion layer Ly uniformly formed on the surface of the LED element Cp. The semiconductor light emitting apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-322923 can include a wavelength conversion layer with a uniform thickness. This apparatus can provide a luminance distribution in which the maximum peak appears at and near the center of the chip (around its optical axis) and the luminance is gradually lowered toward the peripheral area (see FIG. 3). This is a similar phenomenon to the Lambertian distribution for surface light emission, and can be explained as a phenomenon in accordance with the COS function wherein, if in-plane luminance distribution is uniform, the center area shows the maximum value.
In the technical field of, in particular, vehicle headlamps, the maximum value in the luminance distribution of a vehicle headlamp is typically arranged at or near the cutoff line in order to form a clear cutoff line. A shade or the like type of shielding member is typically utilized to cut the half of the luminance distribution as shown in FIG. 4. When the configuration including such a shade is employed, almost half the light at the maximum value in the luminance distribution cannot be utilized, thereby reducing the light utilization efficiency.